World Cup Archives: Pickles the dog finds the missing Jules Rimet trophy in 1966 | FIFA 2014 World Cup | Football | Sport World Cup Archives: Pickles the dog finds the missing Jules Rimet trophy in 1966 15:00 - 20 Mar 2014 British boxer Henry Cooper feeds Pickles the dog with a huge leg of turkey - a reward for finding the World Cup trophy. Credit: PA In March 1966, a few months before the start of the World Cup finals in England, a mongrel dog named Pickles found the missing Jules Rimet trophy in a London street. One week before Pickles came to the rescue, the priceless trophy had been stolen from the Westminster's Methodist Central Hall where it was being displayed, albeit in a glass cabinet. And this despite the presence of no less than five security guards. On that fateful Sunday, however, the guard stationed next to the trophy had taken the day off. The thieves stole in through a back door and snatched away the World Cup.

For his winning role in the tale, Pickles was made Dog of the Year in 1966 and awarded a year's free supply of dog food. His owner, a Thames lighterman named David Corbett, was a prime suspect in the case and police questioned him for hours before he was cleared. David Corbett with his dog Pickles and his wife Jeanne. Credit: PA The thief was eventually unmasked as Edward Betchley, a 46-year-old ex-soldier who insisted that he was just the middle-man. Betchley told police that the mastermind behind the crime was known as The Pole, although to this day it's not clear if he existed. Relieved police show off the Jules Rimet trophy to the media at a press conference. Credit: PA The story of Pickles the dog and the stolen trophy | Football | The Guardian Close This article is 10 years old On a Sunday evening in March 40 years ago, David Corbett left his ground-floor flat in Norwood, south London, to make a telephone call from the kiosk across the road.

With the Thames lighterman was Pickles, the four-year-old mongrel he had taken off his brother John's hands, when he was a puppy, because he chewed furniture. 'I put the lead on Pickles and he went over to the neighbour's car,' recalls Corbett, now 66. 'Pickles drew my attention to a package, tightly bound in newspaper, lying by the front wheel. I picked it up and tore some paper and saw a woman holding a dish over her head, and disks with the words Germany, Uruguay, Brazil. I rushed inside to my wife. She was one of those anti-sport wives. But I said, "I've found the World Cup! I've found the World Cup!"' Corbett, or more precisely, Pickles, had indeed discovered the missing Jules Rimet trophy. Yet, if the Metropolitan Police had not bungled an operation two days earlier, when a ransom demand went wrong, Pickles would not have found the trophy and his place as lead character in a tale that, even today, may not be fully over.

The trophy was stolen on 20 March 1966, a week before Pickles' intervention, from the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster where it was being exhibited in a glass cabinet. Five guards were detailed to keep constant watch. On the Sunday, though, the guard stationed next to the trophy had the day off. With the others enjoying a cup of coffee or a call of nature, it was only when George Franklin finally inspected the case just after midday that he discovered the theft. The thieves had broken in through the back doors. For the Football Association and Sir Stanley Rous, the English president of Fifa, this was the nightmare scenario. Three months before hosting the 1966 World Cup, there was no trophy. The investigation began. Detective Inspector Bill Little heard witness statements from senior guard Frank Hudson and Margaret Coombes, a woman attending a Sunday-school service in a different part of the hall. Both saw a man loitering by the gents. Although their descriptions differed, the police announced they were searching for just one thief. Meanwhile, the FA attempted to deal with the crisis.

Before the theft became public, the FA secretary, Denis Follows, visited silversmith George Bird at his workshop in Fenchurch Street. Follows asked Bird to make a replica of the trophy from the same solid gold as the original, and was told nothing else other than to keep his mouth shut. Very few people, including Rous, knew about the visit. Once the world discovered the theft, a deluge of crank theories arrived at Scotland Yard. One man wrote to say that his clock had told him the trophy was in Wicklow, Ireland. A Susanna Bell in Chile believed 'a coloured man' was the thief. Adolf Hieke sent a photograph from a German newspaper and placed an 'X' on it against the man he believed to be guilty. With the Metropolitan Police an international joke, Little handed over the investigation to the Flying Squad's top man, DI Len Buggy. His break came when the Chelsea and FA chairman Joe Mears was phoned by a man calling himself Jackson. 'There will be a parcel at Chelsea football club tomorrow. Follow the instructions inside,' he told Mears. On the Wednesday after the theft, it arrived containing part of the Jules Rimet.

A ransom note demanded £15,000 in five and one pound notes. 'Dear Joe Kno (sic) no doubt you view with very much concern the loss of the world cup...' it began. 'To me it is only so much scrap gold. If I don't hear from you by Thursday or Friday at the latest I assume its one for the POT.' Jackson called, seeking confirmation that Mears had the parcel. 'Give me £15,000 on Friday and the cup will arrive by cab on Saturday,' he said. As Jackson had requested, Mears posted the message, 'Willing to do business Joe', in Thursday's edition of London's Evening News. But he ignored the warning not to tell the police. On Friday, Buggy arrived at Mears' home but the FA chairman, an angina sufferer, had to go to bed because of stress. So Buggy arranged with Mrs Mears that he would pose as her husband's assistant 'McPhee' when Jackson called. After some hesitation, Jackson agreed to a rendezvous in Battersea Park. Buggy arrived in Mears' fawn Ford Zodiac with £500 in bundles and the remainder of the ransom made from newspaper.

He was told to drive around south London for 10 minutes, before he and Jackson turned off Kennington Park Road. Now, though, the operation went wrong and history opened its door to Pickles. Jackson saw a Transit van and guessed correctly that it was Buggy's back-up team. He tried to escape, but was arrested. The thief's real name was Edward Betchley, a 46-year-old former soldier who had served in the Royal Armoured Corps during the Second World War in Egypt and Italy, before being demobbed with an 'exemplary character' in January 1946. With a previous conviction in 1954 for receiving tins of corned beef, Betchley was hardly bigtime. And at Rochester Row police station, he insisted that he was just the middleman, paid £500 for his part. All Betchley added was that the man behind the theft was known as The Pole. It is not clear if he actually existed. All that mattered now, though, was finding the trophy. According to the Channel 4 programme, Who Stole the Cup?, which will be shown next month, Chief Superintendent John Bailey was offered a deal by Betchley.

He wanted a lady friend to visit him at Brixton prison. If she was followed, Betchley said, then the cup's location would not be revealed. Bailey agreed. Two days later Pickles found the trophy. The media attention was worldwide and, Corbett says, Pickles enjoyed it. Before it began, though, Corbett had to deal with the theory that exercised the police from the moment, breathless and still in his slippers, he arrived at Gypsy Hill police station in Crystal Palace and was taken to Scotland Yard. 'I was suspect number one,' he says. 'I went into this bloody great incident room with twenty coppers taking calls. I heard one say, "We've just searched the Northern [Tube] line because someone said it was under seat number seven." 'They questioned me until 2.30 in the morning. I wondered if I should've chucked it back in the road. I was up at six the next day for work.' Corbett recalls: 'The general election was due but this knocked Harold Wilson off the front pages. When my mates realised they said, "Bloody hell. I bet you nicked it!"' Eventually, though, Corbett was cleared.

Now Pickles began the life of a celebrity. He starred in a feature film, The Spy with the Cold Nose, and appeared on Magpie, Blue Peter and many other TV shows. He was made Dog of the Year, awarded a year's free supply of food from Spillers and there were offers to visit Chile, Czechoslovakia and Germany. 'But I would've had to put Pickles into quarantine for six months and he was only a pet, so I didn't think I could do that,' says Corbett. How did he find the constant attention? 'I got myself an agent. The same as Spike Milligan's. He made me £60 a day, bloody brilliant! He would call and my [ex] wife and I would meet him and his girlfriend and go drinking Champagne.' Corbett's agent arranged entrance to the party on the evening of England's 4-2 victory over West Germany in the World Cup final. 'The streets were full of people. The players were out on a large balcony [of their hotel in Kensington]. I went in with Pickles under my arm and Bobby Charlton, all of them, picked him up. But I ate with the wives in a separate room.

The women weren't allowed upstairs. They made a fuss of the dog, but God they were upset. "Our husbands win the World Cup and the FA banish us down here!" they said.' What Corbett was unaware of, though, was the secret plan that had been successfully carried out earlier that day by the FA to ensure they would not be embarrassed again. Once the trophy had been presented by the Queen to Bobby Moore, plain-clothes officer Bob Geggie was detailed to shadow the England players around the Wembley turf on their lap of honour, watching the trophy closely. Geggie can be seen next to the team on film and photographs taken of those moments. And, unknown even to Geggie, a Wembley policeman, PC Peter Weston had positioned himself near the changing rooms with Bird's replica, which had still been made, although from base metal, for the next stage of the FA's scheme. With the team celebrating inside, Weston took his chance. He tells the C4 programme: 'Luckily the [real] trophy was near the entrance where Nobby [Stiles] was sitting.

I said to him, "I'll have that, you have this." He looked bemused as I legged it, but never said a word. But that meant from when I took it off Nobby, the trophy was a replica. Over the next four years I saw it paraded, in newspapers, on TV, and always chuckled to myself.' But the tale of the Cup was hardly over yet. In 1970, Bird's replica was returned to him and the original given permanently to Brazil. In 1983, the original was stolen and never returned. The replica, though, went up for auction 14 years later at Sotheby's. It was bought for £254,000 by Fifa, eclipsing the reserve price of £30,000, and is now at the National Football museum in Preston. Mears died on 1 July 1966 from the angina attack brought on by the theft, while Betchley, having served the two-year sentence he received for demanding money with menaces, died in 1969 of emphysema. And Pickles' luck also ran out the year after his great find.

'My six-year-old had him on a choke lead,' recalls Corbett. 'He shot after a cat and pulled my son over, before disappearing. I looked for over an hour. Then, in the gardens behind my house I saw him up on a tree. His chain was around the branch. Pickles just hung there.' Corbett buried him in the back garden of the house in Lingfield, Surrey, that the reward money had bought. 'I received £3,000 and paid £3,100 for this house,' says Corbett, who still lives there. Observer Sport has contacted Betchley's daughter, Marie, but she refuses to speak. 'I knew nothing about football then,' she says. 'And I'm not interested now. I can't understand what people would be interested in 40 years down the line.' The fascination is much to do with a dog named Pickles, and a story that refuses to die. Even now, there must be a question over whether Betchley really was the only one involved. 'I've been offered a few hundred pounds from some newspapers,' Marie's husband, John Stringer, says. 'It'll take a lot more for me to open my mouth.

But I handled all my father-in-laws legal affairs at the time. And let me tell you, there is a twist that has yet to be revealed.' It is a shame that Pickles is not around to sniff it out. World Cup mystery: what happened to the original Jules Rimet trophy? | Football | The Guardian World Cup World Cup mystery: what happened to the original Jules Rimet trophy? It evaded the Nazis, was found by Pickles the dog, and went on to be stolen from Brazil in 1983, presumed melted into gold bars – but could the original World Cup trophy still exist? Brazil's captain Carlos Alberto holds the Jules Rimet trophy aloft after his side beat Italy in the 1970 World Cup final.

Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images Paul Gadsby Friday 13 June 2014 08.00 EDT Last modified on Monday 4 April 2016 11.18 EDT Share on Messenger Close World Cup hosts Brazil are of course steeped in glorious football history, but the city staging next month’s final, Rio de Janeiro, is also central to a more sinister World Cup tale – one wrapped in crime, cruelty, shame and more than a splash of intrigue. It has also resulted in a search for football’s holy grail that is, according to some, still ongoing. The holy grail in this case is the Jules Rimet Trophy, the original prize awarded to the winners of the World Cup. At the inception of the tournament in 1930 Fifa agreed that, should any nation win three finals, they would be given the trophy for keeps. Following Brazil’s iconic thrashing of Italy in the 1970 final in Mexico, the trophy was therefore presented to the Brazilian Sports Confederation (CBD), now the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF).

The trophy was placed on display on the third floor of the CBF offices in Rio’s Rua da Alfandega. On the evening of 19-20 December 1983, the building’s nightwatchman was overpowered by a group of thieves seemingly in no mood to embrace the Christmas spirit. Although they had, according to v-brazil.com , hatched the plan around a table in a bar while drinking cachaça, in a plot that was said to be farcically opportunist rather than meticulously organised by an international syndicate. After tying up the nightwatchman, the thieves (some sources have quoted there were two of them, others three) prised open the wooden frame of the bulletproof-glassed display box that housed the trophy and swiped it. There was actually a replica in the building too, carefully secured in a coffer (you can’t be too careful) but the thieves left that alone and took off with the real thing. The crime triggered a desperate search for the perpetrators and the trophy. With several covert foundries in and around the city, fears grew that the trophy would be melted down.

The bullion value was believed to be around £8,000 at the time while the Rio de Janeiro State Bank issued a hefty reward for the trophy’s safe return. In his book The Theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy , Martin Atherton writes that the CBF president, Giulite Coutinho, made a nationwide appeal asking all Brazilians to help recover the trophy, saying: “The spiritual value of the cup is far greater than its material worth” and that the thieves had “no feeling of patriotism”. The nation hung its head in shame. The police embarked on an intense investigation, pursuing an “inside job” line of inquiry and condemning the nightwatchman’s evidence as inconsistent. The day after the theft, two men who had previously worked at the CBF offices as janitors were arrested. However, no charges were ever made and the trophy was never discovered, widely believed to have been melted down and sold as bullion. In 1989 one of those arrested suspects – Antonio Carlos Aranha – was found dead having been shot seven times.

And so the glorious trophy – the gilded 30cm-high statuette of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, made by the Parisian sculptor Abel Lafleur in 1929 – vanished for ever … … Or did it? This is where that splash of intrigue comes in. That December night in Rio was by no means the first time that the security of the Jules Rimet Trophy had been compromised. According to the Italian documentary The Rimet Trophy, by Lorenzo Garzella, Filippo Macelloni and César Meneghetti, football’s greatest prize first came under threat from the Nazis. And they got very close to swiping it. During the second world war the trophy was held by the 1938 winners, Italy, in a Rome bank. Fearing for its safety, the Italian Football Federation’s president, Ottorino Barassi, smuggled the trophy out of the bank and into his apartment in the city. However, the Nazis had followed the scent and conducted a search of Barassi’s home. But they weren’t thorough enough. They missed the old shoebox stashed underneath Barassi’s bed, the trophy hidden inside.

Following West Germany’s victory in the 1954 finals in Switzerland, the trophy resided in Frankfurt. The photojournalist Joe Coyle has claimed that, having studied certain photographs, the trophy taken to Sweden for the 1958 finals was 5cm taller and had an altered base from the 1954 version, but it has never been verified that the trophy was adapted or exchanged while under German control. From there we go to England for our next Jules Rimet incident. The trophy was on public display at Westminster Central Hall three months before Alf Ramsey’s men were to kick off the 1966 tournament. Picture a quiet Sunday lunchtime, four security guards on duty covering the two-storey building. A routine check of the trophy at 11am: all fine. The next routine check at 12.10pm: the glass case holding the trophy smashed, the back doors to the building forced open, the trophy gone. No one saw it being taken.

A ransom demand was made to the FA chairman, Joe Mears, but despite a man being convicted of “being concerned in a larceny after the fact” and “demanding money with menaces”, there was no evidence linking him to the raid in Westminster, and the identity of the thieves – just as in Rio in 1983 – never came to light. Ironically enough, amid the football world’s outrage at this lack of English security, Abrain Tebel of the CBD proclaimed: “It would never have happened in Brazil . Even Brazilian thieves love football and would never commit this sacrilege.” Ahem. But unlike in Brazil, in 1966 the trophy was recovered. Pickles the dog came to the rescue seven days after the theft, discovering the trophy wrapped in newspaper outside the front garden of a house in Upper Norwood, south London. To this day, no one knows how it got there. The FA commissioned a replica trophy to be made in time for the tournament, and a policeman on duty at Wembley for the final has recounted swapping the original for the replica with a jubilant Nobby Stiles shortly after the game.

This replica was used at that night’s official party at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington and subsequent publicity events. Rumours have surfaced that the trophy England handed back for the 1970 tournament was in fact the replica (a switch possibly made by mistake as the replica was a convincing one). The trophy that remained in England was auctioned in 1997 and purchased by Fifa for a staggering £254,500 on the off-chance that maybe, just maybe, the rumours were true and this was the original. They had it examined by an expert jeweller. The result: it was the replica, meaning the real thing had gone to Mexico, and was subsequently taken back home by the victorious Brazil team. Only one mystery remains: what happened to the trophy after that 1983 theft on Rua da Alfandega? Was it really melted down into gold bars in a Brazilian foundry? The football writer Simon Kuper has voiced his reservations over this theory, pointing out that the original trophy wasn’t actually made of solid gold, but of silver coated with gold.

So if it wasn’t taken to a furnace it could be anywhere; hidden on the outskirts of Rio waiting for a pick-up that never happened, tucked away in some dodgy collector’s pokey basement, hidden in a shoebox under someone’s bed. The search continues, the mystery rolls on. Rio has now played host to two major World Cup moments, both of which shook Brazil to its core: Uruguay’s highly unexpected 2-1 defeat of the hosts in the decisive match of the 1950 tournament (labelled by many as the greatest tragedy in Brazilian football) and the 1983 theft of the original trophy. Will 2014 see a hat-trick of calamitous events for Brazil, or will it be third time lucky for the country that has probably made a bigger contribution than any other to the history of the World Cup? Paul Gadsby is the author of the crime novel Chasing the Game , a fictional depiction of the 1966 theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy in London – Paulgadsbyauthor.co.uk Pickles: The Dog That Found the Stolen World Cup Pickles: The Dog That Found the Stolen World Cup 1.8k Share What's This?

Pickles, the dog poses for a photo after he found the Jules Rimet World Cup trophy on March 27th, after it had been stolen. Image: Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images By The Retronaut 2014-06-11 21:50:06 UTC LONDON — On the afternoon of Sunday, March 20, 1966, the World Cup trophy was stolen from central London where it was being exhibited. Despite the presence of two round-the-clock police officers in uniform, plus two more undercover officers during daylight hours, someone had managed to remove the Jules Rimet trophy from its display case while police officers were circuiting the exhibition hall. The Jules Rimet Cup. Image: Keystone-France/Getty Images The gold-plated sterling silver and lapis lazuli trophy depicted the Greek goddess Nike, and was named after FIFA president Jules Rimet. It had been Rimet who, in 1929, had passed the vote initiating the first World Cup competition. The day after the trophy's theft, the Chairman of Britain's Football Association received an anonymous ransom demand for £15,000.

Police arranged a handover of a suitcase full of fake banknotes, only to find that the man they apprehended was a local petty thief and used-car salesman named Edward Bletchley and, as far as they could tell, a hoaxer. Bletchley claimed he was acting as a middleman for a criminal known only as "The Pole", but this could not be confirmed. The World Cup trophy on show to the press, London, March 28, 1966. Image: Manchester Daily Express/Getty Images One week after the theft, Pickles, a black-and-white Collie dog, sniffed out the missing trophy while out on a walk with his owner. The trophy was wrapped in old newspapers, tied with string, and hidden at the bottom of a garden hedge in South London. David Corbett with his dog, Pickles, who found the World Cup in his back garden. Image: Keystone/Getty Images Four months later, the World Cup tournament was held in London. England, the home team, won the cup, and Pickles was invited as guest of honor to the official team celebration banquet. The cup's actual thief was never caught, although suspicion briefly alighted upon Pickles and his owner.

Fortunately both owners and dog had an alibi. Pickles poses with his family, the Corbetts. Image: Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images Among other rewards, Pickles received a medal, was named "Dog of the Year" and given a year's supply of food. His celebrity and earning power grew when he starred in the 1966 film "The Spy With the Cold Nose." Sadly within 12 months, Pickles was dead, choking on his leash in pursuit of a cat. His collar is on display in England's National Soccer Museum. Pickles basks in the glory of his newfound fame. Image: Central Press/Getty Images In 1983, the trophy - awarded permanently to Brazil in 1970 after their third win - was stolen again, and to date has never been recovered. The current trophy is a replica. More work from The Retronaut can be found here . Jules Rimet Trophy - the World Cup the World Cup The original Cup From 1930 to 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy was awarded to the winner of the World Cup of Football.

Originally called "Victory", the trophy more commonly known as the 'World Cup' or 'Coupe du Monde' though it was renamed in 1946 after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who organized the first tournament. This trophy was designed by a French sculptor, Abel Lafleur, as a Goddess of Victory holding an octagonal vessel in her outstretched hands. The trophy was created in gold with a base in semi-precious stones. Protecting the Cup in the 1940s To prevent the Nazis from confiscating the golden Jules Rimet Trophy, Dr. Ottorino Barassi, an Italian sports official, smuggled the trophy from the bank in Rome, and hid it under his bed for most of the war time before the 1950 World Cup. Stolen 1966 The Jules Rimet World Cup trophy was stolen while on exhibition in London just before kick-off of the 1966 finals. The name of the mongrel dog who sniffed out the stolen trophy from its hiding place under a garden hedge in Norwood in South London was called 'Pickles'.

His owner David Corbett collected a GBP6,000 reward, and the man who had demanded a GBP15,000 ransom for the return of the trophy was jailed for two years. Brazil's trophy stolen in 1983 After the Jules Rimet trophy was paraded by the Brazilian players after the 1970 Final match, the top of the trophy disappeared. Brazilian reserve Davio retrieved the valuable gold top from a young spectator at the stadium exit. As a result, the new trophy was designed to have no top! The Jules Rimet trophy was awarded to but not kept by the winning team. The trophy was only permanently awarded if the team became 3-time champions. In 1970, Brazil's third victory in the tournament entitled them to keep the trophy permanently. This particular trophy, however, was stolen in 1983, and the current location of the trophy is unknown. The trophy was stolen from a display box in the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Association in Rio on 20 December 1983, and was probably melted down afterwards. A copy, made by a German goldsmith, was donated to the Brazilian Football Association by Kodak of Brazil.

A new trophy After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed. Constructed in 18-karat solid gold, the trophy is 36 centimeters (14 inches) tall, has two rings in malachite inlaid in the base, and weighs a total of 4,970 grams (11 pounds). The new trophy was designed by Silvio Gazzaniga (and submitted by Bertoni of Milan, Italy). Gazzaniga's design was chosen by FIFA from 53 other trophy models presented. Gazzaniga described his work by saying, "The lines spring out of the base, rising in spirals, stretching out to receive the world. From the remarkable dynamic tensions of the compact body of the sculpture rise the figures of two athletes at the stirring moment of victory." The new trophy is not awarded to the winning nation permanently, no matter how many World Cups they win. The original trophy remains in FIFA's possession, while the winning National Association receives a gold-plated replica.

A new World Cup trophy will be required for 2042, as the name plaque at base of the current trophy is designed to be filled up by names of the 17 champions from 1974 to 2038. Therefore in 2042, a new trophy will be used, and the old trophy will then be kept at the FIFA headquarters permanently. Share: Holding the 1966 World Cup to ransom: The curious theft of the Jules Rimet trophy | Metro News Holding the 1966 World Cup to ransom: The curious theft of the Jules Rimet trophy Metro Sport Reporter for Metro.co.uk Monday 30 Jun 2014 11:51 am Bobby Moore, carried shoulder high by his team mates, holding aloft the World Cup trophy in 1966 (Picture: AP Photo) Paul Gadsby – the author of ‘Chasing the Game’ , a fictional depiction of the 1966 theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy in London – reveals the rumour and intrigue behind the controversy which threatened to ruin England’s glorious World Cup summer of 1966 before it had even begun.

The history of the World Cup is rich with tales of glory, bravery and heartbreak, but there has also been a fair dose of controversy, shame and deception – not least when London was at the centre of the tournament’s biggest criminal mystery, a saga that has links with the venue for this year’s final, Rio de Janeiro. For England, the story of 1966 is of course one of Russian linesmen, undisciplined Argentinians and the Jules Rimet Trophy gleaming in Bobby Moore’s hands. But three months before the tournament began, things were looking very different. The reputation of the country and the English FA was, in the eyes of the footballing world, in tatters following a global scandal that threatened to shame England forever and ruin the heritage of the tournament. It all happened on Sunday 20 March 1966. The Jules Rimet Trophy, the original prize awarded to the winners of the World Cup, was on display in Westminster Central Hall. Four security guards were covering the two-storey building. During a routine check of the room housing the trophy by one of the guards at 11am, the trophy was seen in its glass case as normal.

Upon the next check at 12.10pm, the case had been forced open and the trophy was gone. A search of the building found the rear doors open, the locks broken. But no one actually saw the trophy being stolen. The football world unleashed its outrage at this lack of English security. Many officials contacted England’s FA chairman Joe Mears personally to voice their indignation, Abrain Tebel of the Brazilian federation – the reigning champions – proclaiming it a ‘sacrilege.’ Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad took the case, led by Detective Inspector Charles Buggy. Their first strong lead came a few days later when Mears received a ransom demand by a man calling himself ‘Jackson’, who enclosed with the note the removable lining from the top of the trophy. Mears inspected the lining and was in no doubt; Jackson had the real McCoy. Further contact was made from Jackson to Mears, and they arranged a meeting in Battersea Park for that Friday where the money would be exchanged for the trophy. But Mears suffered an angina attack on the eve of the exchange, forcing Buggy to step in at the last minute. He met Jackson at the park, claiming he was Mears’ assistant at the FA.

Jackson got into the passenger seat of Buggy’s car and directed them to where he said the trophy was being kept. But Jackson grew suspicious; at St Agnes Place, Kennington, he got out of the car and ran off. Buggy chased and apprehended him. ‘Jackson’ was revealed to be Edward Betchley, a 47-year-old Londoner who denied stealing the trophy or knowing of its whereabouts, claiming he’d been offered £500 to act as an intermediary by someone he knew only as ‘The Pole’. With no evidence linking him to the raid in Westminster, Betchley was only ever convicted of ‘being concerned in a larceny after the fact’ and received a two-year prison sentence. The trophy was found on Sunday 27 March under a front-garden hedge in Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, by a dog named Pickles, being walked by his owner, David Corbett (other reports have claimed the trophy was propped up against the wheel of a car parked next to said hedge). Corbett took the trophy to Gipsy Hill police station and Pickles became a national hero.

With a dog as its hero the story became wrapped in a light-hearted bubble The fact that the England team went on to win the tournament, combined with the trophy being fortuitously discovered by a dog, has helped wrap the story in a light-hearted bubble over the years, almost giving it a comic legend. But there were sinister elements behind the crime and it did claim a victim: Joe Mears died of a heart attack on 1 July 1966, four weeks short of seeing England lift the gold. Edward Betchley died of emphysema two years after his release, having only ever admitting that he was acting as an intermediary, while no one has ever been formally connected to the theft. To this day the crime remains one of the most intriguing and fascinating mysteries in British history. Who were the thieves? Why was the trophy placed in such a bizarre and insecure location? Among the theories that have surfaced is that a London underground criminal organisation was behind the theft. Considering the raid involved swiping the trophy in between security checks and making a presumably quick getaway to avoid witnesses, it could be argued that a gang carrying out a pre-planned operation was more plausible than an individual snatching an opportunity on the day.

Some have suggested that whoever had the trophy after Betchley’s arrest stashed it under the bush panicking from the high level of international publicity the case was receiving. It has also been rumoured that the real trophy was mixed up with a replica (that the FA had commissioned shortly after the theft) during the wild celebrations after the final, either deliberately or unintentionally. Others have claimed the original was never actually found, and that the trophy Pickles discovered was a replica in a stage-managed publicity stunt to convince Fifa and the rest of the world that the ‘original’ had been found. Brazil earned the right to keep the Jules Rimet Trophy after becoming the first team to win it three times in 1970. But the trophy’s legacy suffered further ignominy in 1983 when it was stolen from their federation’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro one late December evening. Despite a desperate search, the trophy was never recovered. With several covert foundries in and around the city, it was widely believed to have been melted down and sold as bullion. For Brazil, there was no curious dog coming to the rescue.

More Jules Rimet: The man who kicked off the World Cup | The Independent Profiles Jules Rimet: The man who kicked off the World Cup He never kicked a ball in anger. But Jules Rimet believed football had the ability to unite nations. John Lichfield reports Sunday 4 June 2006 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online In the small village of Theuley-les-Lavoncourt in eastern France stands a monument to a local man who changed the world. The monument takes the form of a grassed football penalty area, complete with a replica goal, and a portrait of a man who never kicked a ball in anger in his life. His name was Jules Rimet. Of all the Frenchmen who touched the consciousness of the world in the last century - Charles de Gaulle, Henri Matisse, Marcel Proust - M. Rimet reached more people, in more countries, more lastingly than any other. His child - or monster - will make one of its four-yearly explosions into the world's rapt gaze from this Friday. M. Rimet, a grocer's son who became a lawyer, invented the World Cup.

His grandson, Yves Rimet, 74, who remembers his grandfather well, describes him as a "humanist and idealist, who believed that sport could unite the world. Unlike many others in his time, he realised that, to be truly democratic, to truly engage the masses, international sport must be professional. All the same," M. Rimet said. "my grandfather would have been disappointed with the money-dominated business that football has become. That was not his vision." To the end of his life in 1956, Jules Rimet predicted that international football would re-create the spirit of medieval "chivalry". Sport - and above all football - would be the means to teach the world's masses to appreciate the Christian virtues of hard work, honesty, obedience to rules, comradeship and fair play. Oh dear. M. Rimet helped to change the world but not quite in the way he intended. International football and the World Cup will unite the globe for the next month. Some of the "Rimet" qualities will be on display. But a new chivalry?

The name Jules Rimet has not been forgotten by English people of the 1966 generation, the only generation to see the World Cup won by the country of football's birth. It will always be "the Jules Rimet trophy" which was held aloft by Bobby Moore at Wembley in July 1966. This absurdly small, winged statuette was stolen in London in the run-up to the 1966 World Cup and later rediscovered by a dog called Pickles. When M. Rimet crossed the Atlantic in a steamship to the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, he carried that small trophy in his bag. It was later presented permanently to its serial-winners, Brazil. But who was Jules Rimet? And how did a man who never played football (his sports were fencing and running) come to invent a competition that transformed football into the international business, and obsession, which we know today? M. Rimet was born in Haute-Saone in eastern France in 1876. He was the son of a poor grocer, who migrated to Paris when Jules was 11 years old.

Unlike many of the figures who dominated the administration of international sport at that time - such as Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Frenchman who re-invented the Olympic Games - M. Rimet was not an aristocrat but a self-made man. That fact enormously influenced his attitudes to sport. M. Rimet regarded the obsession of M. Coubertin, and others, with the preservation of amateurism in sport as a form of snobbishness and social exclusion. He believed, like them, that sport could channel and mellow the virulent nationalism which had disturbed the 19th century but only if it reached out to all social classes. Young Jules studied hard and became a succesful lawyer in Paris. In 1897, when only 24, he started a sports club in the Paris suburbs called Red Star, which offered a number of activities and did not refuse members on the grounds of class. Crucially, M. Rimet decided that one of the sports played at Red Star should be football, which was spreading fast across Europe and the world from its beginnings in English public schools and the first professional league - the Football League - in the north and midlands of England.

Football's reputation in polite society in France at the time was appallingly low. It was looked down on by the French middle classes as a game for thugs, professionals and Englishmen. M. Rimet and others were instrumental in developing the game in France and in the first efforts to create a world football body, the Federation International de Football Association in 1904. From the beginning, Fifa had vague plans for a world football competition but allowed itself to be sucked instead into an amateur football tournament within the Olympic Games. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 exploded the efforts to create a codified, world game. M. Rimet fought as an officer throughout the war, winning the Croix de Guerre. Paradoxically, the war showed that football had already become a world game. British and German soldiers played football in No Man's Land at Christmas in 1914. After the war, in 1919, M. Rimet became the first president of the Fédération Française de Football (FFF) and, two years later, the head of the revived world body, Fifa.

He remained president for 33 years, until 1954, taking the number of member countries from a dozen to 85. He pushed once again the idea of a world football tournament but was opposed bitterly by both Baron Coubertin (and the militant amateurs) and by the Football Association in England. The FA had left Fifa after the war, partly because the English game (and the Scottish and Welsh games) did not want to associate with former enemies, partly because there was an assumption that the "foreign" game was weaker and, therefore, irrelevant. M. Rimet pushed on regardless. "My grandfather was a gentle man but also a tough one," said Yves Rimet. "He was a lawyer. He was difficult to argue with because he never gave up. He got on with the English officials individually but found them impossible as an institution. But then, that is the story of Anglo-French relations, isn't it?" In 1928, Fifa decided to go ahead with the first World Cup competition. Because the Uruguayan government offered to pay all travel expenses - and because the professional game was highly developed in South America - Fifa agreed to stage the tournament in Uruguay.

The decision was bitterly opposed by many European federations. There was no air travel in 1930. Clubs would lose their players for almost three months as they sailed across the Atlantic and back again. Only four European countries participated: France, Belgium, Romania and Yugoslavia. The final - won by the hosts, Uruguay, against Argentina - caused riots in both countries. The tournament was nonetheless judged a great sporting and commercial success. The World Cup never looked back. Controversy muddied the next two tournaments. Benito Mussollini turned the 1934 competition in Italy - the first to have qualifying rounds; the first final to be broadcast on radio - into a fascist jamboree. M. Rimet was criticised for turning a blind eye to this "politicisation" of football. There were even, unfounded, suggestions that he had fascist sympathies. Politics invaded the pitch again four years later. The German team gave Nazi salutes before the 1938 games in France. Austria had qualified to take part but had been swallowed up by Nazi Germany before the finals began. M. Rimet pushed on regardless. His vision of a football World Cup as a force for peace survived the Second World War.

According to his grandson, he was terribly proud that Fifa had emerged unscathed from the conflict while the League of Nations disappeared. In 1950, in Brazil, even England joined in, proving the native game's effortless superiority by losing 1-0 to the United States. Jules Rimet was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1956 but was rejected by the Norwegian jury. No prize was awarded that year. Some say that the controversy over the 1934 "fascist" World Cup ruined his chances. Yves Rimet remembers his grandfather as a man who was more interested in literature than in sport. He was a devout Catholic and a Christian Democrat, who rejected politics as "too dirty" and tried to achieve humanist goals through football without, it is said, being very impressed by football as a spectacle. "I remember him taking me on to his knee and he would talk to me about poetry, about books, about music, about nature, but never about football and never about his achievements at Fifa," says Yves Rimet . In terms of uniting the world, and blunting xenophobia, M. Rimet's vision could be said to have been achieved beyond his wildest dreams.

There are now 300 million registered football players in the world. The commercialisation of the game has internalionalised it as never before. What would M. Rimet have made of Old Trafford singing the Marseillaise to honour Eric Cantona or Arsenal fielding a team entirely composed of foreigners? On the other hand, the behaviour of some players, and some supporters, over the next month, can be confidently expected to fall short of M. Rimet's standards. He once predicted that, through football, the human race would one day achieve a state of humanist grace in which "men will be able to meet in confidence without hatred in their hearts and without an insult on their lips." More about: How Pickles the dog saved England’s World Cup (1966) – Channel 4 News Share on Twitter In March 1966, four months before the World Cup was due to kick off at Wembley, the Jules Rimet trophy, borrowed from the Football Association for the Stanley Gibbons Stampex exhibition at Westminster Central Hall, was stolen from a public display case despite a heavy security presence, writes Ian Searcey.

Quizzed by ITN reporter John Shearer about the theft, the chairman of the exhibition organisers, a clearly rattled Cecil Richardson, was adamant that precautions had been adequate, though admitted that “human error” may have played a role in losing the trophy. The trophy was missing for a week, during which the FA received a hoax ransom demand for £15,000, (the cup was only worth £3,000, despite the £30,000 insurance that had been taken out) before Pickles the dog and his owner David Corbett found it wrapped in newspaper under a small tree near their south London home on the 28th. Shearer was again on hand to interview Mr Corbett and an uninterested Pickles as they posed for the press by the famous shrub. No-one was ever caught for the theft, and when England went on to win the World Cup, Pickles and his owner were invited to the players’ banquet. David Corbett received £6,000 in rewards and Pickles got a medal before moving into film work (The Spy with the Cold Nose) until his untimely death in 1967.

Brazil were permanently awarded the Jules Rimet following their third victory in 1970, but in December 1983 it was stolen again from a bullet-proof case at the Brazilian Football Confederation headquarters in Rio and, in the absence of Pickles, has never been recovered. Missing for 30 years: What happened to the Jules Rimet trophy? | FourFourTwo Enter your keywords Missing for 30 years: What happened to the Jules Rimet trophy? Sam Rowe tells the story of the legendary trophy, which hasn't been seen for 30 years... or has it? by Published 6 December 2013 Not quite the World Cup curtain raiser, but a twitch of the net curtains at the very least. On Friday, as the usual gaggle of besuited ex-pros fish out numbered balls to determine who plays who next June in Brazil, all eyes will be on one thing - no, not the frightfully gorgeous model-types inexplicably brought in to preside over the draw, but a 14.5-inch tall chunk of 18-carat gold, otherwise known as the World Cup trophy. But let’s face facts: it’s pretty boring.

Sure, the trophy is highly coveted, with 32 nations duking it out every four years for the chance to grasp it aloft. It’s immensely valuable, too, believed to be worth around £7m in change. And yet the 13.61-pound trophy, created in 1970 after Brazil kept the original following a trio of World Cup wins, will never accrue the same scandal, sex appeal or Hollywood-esque drama as its predecessor. Hunted by the Nazis and stolen before the 1966 World Cup only to be retrieved by a black and white collie, the Jules Rimet trophy has been missing for 30 years this month (the exact anniversary is December 20), having been pilfered in Brazil, never to be seen again – supposedly melted into gold bars by its captors. But this ultimately successful attempt to snatch the hallowed statuette - held as dear to football fans as the Holy Grail is to Christians… and perhaps Monty Python fans - was merely the last of many.

The story of the trophy First awarded to Uruguay after they beat Argentina in the inaugural tournament final in 1930, the ‘Victory’ or ‘Coupe du Monde’ (World Cup) trophy was one-foot high, made with gold-plated sterling silver and created by French sculptor Abel Lafleur. In 1946 it was renamed after Jules Rimet, the FIFA president who passed the vote to establish the World Cup in 1929. After Uruguay’s maiden cup win, victory for Italy followed in 1934 and ’38, before the Second World War disrupted things somewhat. That’s not to say both the tournament and trophy weren’t sought after – Adolf Hitler famously applied for a 1942 tournament to be held in Germany, while FIFA vice-president Ottorino Barassi prevented Nazi officers from pinching the Jules Rimet by storing it in a shoebox beneath his bed, a place they failed to look when searching the Italian official’s property.

July 1930: Rimet himself (l) presents the trophy to Uruguayan FA president Paul Jude after the final It was also the Germans – or West Germany, more specifically – that added a fresh layer of mystery to the curious case of Jules Rimet in the 1950s, as following West Germany’s victory in 1954, the statuette appeared for Sweden’s 1958 tournament fitted with a distinctively altered base, along with a few extra centimetres in height. Some believe this was in fact a replica, the original Rimet being either lost or stolen in Germany the year before. Of course, by now we all know about the trophy – whether original or German imitation – going missing months before England’s victorious World Cup campaign of 1966; lifted from a stamp exhibition and discovered by Pickles the dog a week later (with ransom notes, demands for £15,000 and a bag stuffed with paper unfolding in between). “Less well known is that after Pickles’ discovery, England’s Football Association secretly asked the jeweller George Bird to make a replica,” says sports writer Simon Kuper, who embarked on his own search for the mythical trophy.

“Bird produced a gilded bronze trophy that looked just like the cup Pickles had found. “Now there were two Rimets, or perhaps three if the original had indeed disappeared in the 1950s.” What’s even more intriguing, notes Kuper, is that after Bird’s death in 1995, his replica Rimet was sold at auction for a staggering £254,500. The ‘anonymous’ bidder? FIFA. “In 2006 I asked FIFA if it had thought Bird’s trophy was the real Rimet. I didn’t expect a reply,” admits Kuper.

“But FIFA’s media office emailed back [and said], ‘Yes, FIFA took the decision to buy this trophy as it was thought to be the original one.’” March 1966: A post-Pickles policeman - not the last Englishman to hoist the trophy that year Regardless of whether FIFA had managed to procure the original Jules Rimet trophy (spoiler alert: they didn’t, it was Bird’s bronze duplicate), the statue retrieved by Pickles the collie was retained by Brazil in 1970, as tournament rules then dictated any country to score a hat-trick of victories could have the cup for keeps. And keep it they did, for 13 years, until two thieves hog-tied a nightwatchman in the Rua da Alfandega building, breached the trophy’s bullet-proof glass casing and made off with the Rimet. Without wanting to point fingers, Brazil may have been asking for it, even if only a little. Reminiscent of a commentator deriding a striker’s performance seconds before a 30-yard scissor-kicked goal, it was Brazil’s own snooty schadenfreude came back to haunt them.

Burgled in Brazil “At the time of the theft of the trophy in England in 1966,” writes Martin Atherton in his book, The Theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy, “Abrain Tebel of the Brazilian Sports Confederation had stated that ‘It would never have happened in Brazil. Even Brazilian thieves love football and would never commit this sacrilege.’” But, fast-forward to the early hours of 20 December 1983, and that was precisely what transpired. With a nation in mourning, the fallout from the robbery was quite savage. Though Brazilian idol Pele sympathised with the perpetrators, blaming the robbery instead on ‘desperation’ due to the country’s widespread poverty, in 1989 one of the rumoured suspects, Antonio Carlos Aranha, was found dead, having been shot seven times. It turned out not everyone was as compassionate as the former Santos striker. July 1974: Pele keeps the Jules Rimet, Uwe Seeler holds the new World Cup trophy Despite a countrywide manhunt (and trophy hunt) and a few arrests, no-one was ever charged with the robbery and, as such, it remains elusive.

The most widely believed theory is that the Jules Rimet was melted and sold as bullion, but Kuper is not convinced. “The story has holes,” Kuper claims. “For a start, the Rimet couldn’t be melted into gold bars because it wasn’t solid gold. Most likely, the German replica wasn’t all gold either. Moreover, the police had no evidence the trophy had been melted down. Indeed, the convicted Argentine gold dealer Juan Carlos Hernandez testified that he didn’t melt it down.” Come mid-1984 and Brazil, in an attempt to restore national pride, had created their own replica, made from the moulds taken following West Germany’s 1954 win, and presented before a friendly match with England, which they lost 2-0. This meant yet another replica was in existence, and yet the original Jules Rimet cup was still at large. Unless it was melted into gold that is, or lost in Germany way back in the 1950s. Obviously. Back to today, and as the ritzy ball-picking soiree unfolds, spare a moment’s thought for poor World Cup 2.0, without even a name of its own.

Sure, it’s worth millions (though experts would pour scorn on the suggestions it is solid gold, claiming it would be impossible to lift), but it will forever be a shadow of its predecessor. A big hunk of unfulfilled potential and broken promises. Worth a fortune and somehow bitterly disappointing. Oh, and speaking of which, good luck to Roy Hodgson’s England in the draw. Topics

Question: What was the name of the dog which found the football World Cup, the Jules Rimet Trophy, in 1966?
Answer: Pickles